Since opening in April last year, Searle Street Post Production (SSPP) has had a continuous flow of commercials and features through the facility – a great mixture of both local and international work.
In their first year of business, they have met and exceeded their initial projections and have already doubled in size and launched a separate long form division to keep up with demand.
“We really do have a good mix of work coming through across the spectrum of the different disciplines,’ says creative director Heino Henning. “We have also completed a fair amount of international projects.
“Searle Street handled the digital intermediate (DI) on the Dutch feature De Heineken Ontvoering, with Rutger Hauer; supplied digital dailies to the American action film Death Race Inferno; and is currently supplying front-end digital dailies and editorial services for the latest season of the British TV series, Strike Back.
“The much anticipated post-production rebate will help us attract more long form DI work – it should be a game-changer. On the commercial side Cape Town is still a firm favourite among the international clients – about a third of the commercials we have completed during the last year was for international delivery.’
Focus in the market has certainly shifted to client service and post-production is constrained by shrinking budgets. Technology is becoming more accessible to smaller facilities, and so the simpler online jobs are starting to move to them.
“There will always be a need for people with our expertise, creativity and experience, which allows us to do the more complex jobs,’ says Henning. “That being said, we looked at all the options available to meet the increasing demand for cost-effective solutions and have just invested in The Foundry’s HIERO suite in combination with NUKE and Resolve as the best way of facilitating simpler and lower-cost jobs.
“We’re the first South African company to acquire HIERO following its March 2012 release, putting us in good company alongside international market leaders like The Moving Picture Company (MPC), The Mill and Smoke & Mirrors.
“It’s also worth noting that we’ve upgraded our Bones to a Flexxity. Like Bones, this non-linear dailies software solution manages the entire dailies production process, allowing for a quick turnaround, rapid picture and sound synching, and an integrated colour-correction toolset.
“It also offers multiple, parallel output channels for painless and on time dailies deliveries, but Flexxity goes further in the way it handles both post and film dailies, providing native support for DPX, R3D, ARRIRAW, Quicktime (including ProRes) and single frame file formats. It also offers stereo colour matching and parallax processing for stereoscopic 3D support.’
There has been a shift to on-set solutions over the traditional off-site facility solution. Facilities are definitely gearing towards offering a pod-like on-set solution, backed up by the support that the technological infrastructure of the facility offers. This allows SSPP to offer clients the peace of mind of secure and stable backups with the convenience of on-set execution.
Searle Street is poised to enter its second year of operation, and there is little doubt, based on the first year’s performance, that it will go from strength to strength.
